


the space between breaths (is where you'll find me)

by misbegotten



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9859787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: The first time they kiss they don't actually kiss.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PatPrecieux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatPrecieux/gifts).



The first time they kiss they don't actually kiss. It happens like this:

James is dozing on Robbie's sofa, practically falling into Robbie's lap after too many days straight at the nick. Neither of them wants to be alone; a father beating a child to death is too horrible to contemplate in sleep, so they've been watching telly and picking at takeaway. James starts to fumble for a pack of cigarettes through half-closed eyes, and Robbie reaches out a hand to -- well, he doesn't remember now. Still him, shush him like a child, tell him to go to sleep? At any rate, he puts his hand on James' mouth and to both their surprise James presses his lips across the surface of Robbie's finger. 

It is a strange sort of thing, not a kiss but incredibly personal at the same time. Robbie inhales tightly, his heart rattling in an odd way in his chest, and James turns his head, muttering an apology. Robbie puts his hand on James' chin, brings their faces back towards one another. His thumb lands on James' mouth, and James parts his lips enough to let it rest on his lips. Then tentatively reaches out his tongue and licks.

Something hot and fluttery goes through Robbie, and he lets his thumb fall further, grazing James' teeth. James, his eyes still half-shuttered so as to hide his thoughts, takes Robbie's thumb into his mouth and bites down gently. Not so much as to hurt, just enough to graze. To say, maybe, _yes, I'm yours if you want me_.

Robbie doesn't move away, and so James takes the opportunity to suckle on the tip of Robbie's thumb. That should not be incredibly erotic, but it is. It's also well beyond the bounds of a governor-sergeant relationship, but that thought does no more than flicker through Robbie's mind. Because James stopped being Sgt. Hathaway many months ago and became James, his partner in all things professional and recreational, the one who fills up the hours when Robbie is not working or doing what Lynn laughingly calls the boredom of "adulting." So here he is on the sofa with his thumb in James' mouth and it doesn't feel wrong. Then James releases Robbie's thumb with a gentle press of lips on the pad, and Robbie realises that's their first kiss out of the way.

He takes a breath and leans in.

There have been a lot of kisses between the second and the one that he is experiencing now. James is feeling playful, perhaps a bit dirty if the tangle of their tongues is anything to go by, and Robbie wonders if he will ever tire of kissing James. It seems unlikely. Snogging has never been something that Robbie considers himself expert at. Not that Val ever complained. In fact, she'd improved his technique considerably over the course of the years. It's funny how you can kiss someone so many times and it's still never quite the same. It seems the same, maybe, but when Robbie looks back he can remember sad kisses, happy kisses, fevered kisses... A whole library of kiss memories upon which to draw.

Kissing James is nothing like any of them. For one thing, Val never seemed in awe of kissing him. Right good for the ego, is James. James kisses like he's afraid he's going to wake up and find that Robbie is a dream. There's something a little tentative mixed with something else a little desperate about it, and Robbie finds that rather endearing.

Also, except for occasions when he and Val were in strange positions (that time in the back of the borrowed Jag -- he still can't think about that without blushing), he's never kissed _up_. James is taller than him, not tall enough that he has to get on his tiptoes, but tall enough that James tends to bend down to reach Robbie properly. James is lanky and lean, and folding himself inwards to reach Robbie seems natural enough until Robbie pushes on James' shoulders, makes him stand straight, and kisses upwards. Then James stops stooping to reach Robbie, and that leads to some joking about everybody being the same height horizontally. Not that they've made it that far yet.

James has him pressed against the sofa again, that magical place where they seem to do most of their canoodling. And James kisses him with that sense of wonder, like Robbie's going to evaporate if James doesn't pin him down. But Robbie's not going anywhere. Perhaps, in fact, it's time they went a bit further than snogging. James has been content to let Robbie take the lead, never impatient, though certainly tantalising. James has somehow become his everything, the space that punctuates all good things. Why stop now?

So Robbie takes a breath and leans in.


End file.
